This Tower of Ashes

This Tower of Ashes
Magazine Cover
Author	George R. R. Martin
Published on	1976
Publisher	Analog Annual

This Tower of Ashes is a science-fiction short story by George R. R. Martin, first published in the April 1976 issue of Analog Annual. It takes place in the "Thousand Worlds" universe, and is set on the Jambles planet of Jamison's World during the post-Interregnum period. It is about a man who is heartbroken over a failed relationship and has exiled himself to an alien wilderness.

Plot Summary

— WARNING: THIS SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS —

John Bowen lives isolated in the titular tower of ashes, a gloomy ruin in the mainland of Jamison’s World. Among the fantastic fauna of the mainland are the dream spiders, creatures whose poison can induce vivid hallucinations in their victims. Dream spider venom is also a popular drug, so John exchanges poison sacs with dealers for supplies. He has been living this way for a few years, but he recounts a story that happened shortly after he arrived in the tower.

John used to live in the city of Port Jamison with his partner Crystal, until she fell in love with Gerry. Unable to handle his feelings for the new couple, John self-exiled in the tower with his cat Squirrel. Crystal and Gerry find him a month later and try to convince him to return. The trio spends the night together, with John going back and forth between trying to win Crystal back and realising it’s just a fantasy. He’s constantly clashing with Gerry, and this leads him to offer the couple a tour in the beautiful forests near his tower.

Things go especially wrong when he takes them to the spider-chasm to see dream spiders in their natural environment: Gerry accidentally slips and gets caught in the spider web, with dream spiders approaching both him and John. John flirts with the idea of not saving Gerry, but in the end chooses to do so, at the expense of being bitten by a spider. Crystal and Gerry nurse him back to health, but leave shortly afterwards. Crystal had a different and possibly more accurate recollection of the events of that night, and it’s implied that John is slowly losing his grip on reality.

— END OF SPOILERS —

Themes

Artwork by Paul Sonju, from Songs the Dead Men Sing

This Tower of Ashes explores the fine line between lies and truth, and by extension, echoes Martin's recurring thesis about the relationship between reality and fantasy. The story draws a portrait of a man who prefers to see himself, his life and surrounding people according to a certain narrative, and distances himself from real life if it contradicts that narrative. At the beginning of the story, John drunkenly muses that the people of Port Jamieson are stories, to which the grizzled spider venom trafficker Korbec disagrees, claiming that "[people's] lives are rotten stories" and that "they just kinda wander around and ramble and go on and on. Nothin’ ever finishes." John responds that while he recognises that truth, he "cannot live it." This is John's fatal flaw and the cautionary message at the heart of This Tower of Ashes. As Priscilla Zorzi from The Fandomentals points out, everyone loves dreams, and "even the spider’s victims would die without a fight because that’s how sweet fantasies are." But we pay a high price when we’re unable to let go of our fantasies, and it is important to be aware of that fact.

Author's Notes

Martin wrote This Tower of Ashes during an emotionally painful time in his life. His girlfriend had just dumped him for his best friend. He promptly fell in love with another woman with whom he felt a strong connection, but the relationship ended abruptly when she fell in love with someone else. Martin claims that the story "came out of all that."

Martin notes that he wrote the story shortly before the 1974 Worldcon, held in Washington D.C.

Publication History

This Tower of Ashes was first published in the Analog Annual magazine in 1976.

It was included in the Martin's short story collections Songs of Stars and Shadows, published in 1977, and Songs the Dead Men Sing, published in 1983.

It was later included in his 2003 anthology Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective.

Adaptations

In 2007, Martin's short story anthology Dreamsongs was released in audiobook format. It included a recording of This Tower of Ashes read by Kirby Heyborne.

Reception

In 1977, This Tower of Ashes was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Short Story.

Connections to the "Thousand Worlds" Universe

John and Crystal are natives of Baldur, in the Manrealm, which is the same planet where Sandkings is set, where Dirk t'Larien from Dying of the Light was born, and where Robb's and Lya's home is located in A Song for Lya.

In Sandkings, the protagonist Simon Kress visits an exotic animal and artefact shop called "Wo & Shade." This may be the same establishment where John and Crystal discovered the unique silver and obsideon artefacts which prompted their journey from Baldur to Jamison's World.

Dirk from Dying of the Light also mentions spending time on Jamison's World and recalls the locals' fondness for "fresh boiled sand dragon."

Jamison's World is located near Corlos, the setting of And Seven Times Never Kill Men! In that story, the trader Ryther witnesses the Steel Angels committing genocide against the Jaenshi. She threatens to report their crimes to the authorities on Jamison's World. But as Jamison's World has no colonial program and has never known military action, the Steel Angels are unconcerned about possible reprimands, a prediction which proves correct.

Jamison's World is also mentioned in Bitterblooms, as one of the planets where Morgan has travelled, and the origin of her mask and mirror.

Allusions to Other GRRM Works

This Tower of Ashes is similar in tone, structure, themes and characters to an earlier Martin story, The Second Kind of Loneliness. Priscilla Zorzi observes that both stories feature a male protagonist who lives in self-imposed isolation in a surreal place. This isolation was "largely motivated by a romantic rejection and the female figure is heavily idealised." We also know very little about the protagonist’s inner life besides this rejection, but their feelings on the matter are extensively explored. Just as in Loneliness, the narrator of This Tower of Ashes has conflicted feelings about this rejection. He’s aware that "he isn’t entitled to the love of his ex and that pursuing a relationship with her is fruitless, yet at the same time he still desires this relationship." In both stories this conflict "happens entirely in the protagonist’s head, without any external forces weighing in on the issue." The romantic rejections are also at the centre of the protagonists’ loss of touch with reality. It is never implied that Crystal or Karen were at fault, but the fact that they didn’t correspond to a man's feelings was directly connected to that man going insane. Finally, the protagonists of both stories mistake reality and illusion, something that becomes apparent for the reader only at the end. The final twists make us reconsider everything these narrators told us so far, what we thought we knew about them, and how much we can trust their account of events.